1745 Wit (1 results)

Very good. One minor scuff in sea area. Size 17.25 x 21 Inches. This is Frederic De Wit's map of Africa, Arabia, and part of India, in a handsome example of its scarce 1745 edition printed by Renier and Joshua Ottens. The map represents a key passage in the East India trade routes across the Indian Ocean. It is, moreover, a fine example of the highpoint of Dutch engraving - the work of master engraver Romeyn De Hooghe. A Closer Look Presented as a nautical chart replete with compass roses and rhumb lines, the engraving is oriented to the east and focuses exclusively on coastal information, islands, and navigational detail. The chart presents the coastline from Africa's Cape of Good Hope to India's Cape Comorin, including the whole of the Arabian Peninsula, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf. Madagascar and a fan of islands stretching to the Maldives are exceptionally well-detailed, emphasizing the navigability of the Indian Ocean directly without recourse to hugging the coast: a key detail for the European trader, who would consider this chart a step along the way to the East Indies. A Masterwork of Etching Despite its limited utility as a working nautical atlas, De Wit's Zee Atlas experienced a remarkable printing history. One contributing factor to its longevity is its beauty, greatly enhanced on many of its charts by the bravura etching of Romeyn De Hooghe - one of Amsterdam's finest portraitists and engravers. De Wit's chart is embellished with five of De Hooghe's sailing ships, two of which are locked in battle. The cartouche's decoration is a superb specimen of the master's work, meant to emphasize the exoticism of the lands depicted. In the foreground, piled with elephant tusks and other trade goods, a lion roars at a leopard, which rears with a giant serpentine monster pinned under a paw. A water buffalo and an exotic bird look on from the left. To the right rides an Arab horseman near an animal-headdress-wearing figure smoking a pipe - possibly opium. Atop the cartouche, a figure in European ecclesiastical robes kneels before a turbaned figure in finery decorated with a cross: a representation of Prester John, the mythical leader of a long-sought-for Christian empire thought to lie hidden in Eastern Africa. Publication History and Census The chart first appeared in De Wit's 1675 Zee Atlas , reprinted by Renard in the early 18th century and again by Ottens in 1745. Sixteen entries for the various editions of this chart are listed in OCLC, but only one of these is the 1745 edition, kept in the Biblioteca Nacional de Espana. The Ottens issues of these maps were often bound in composite atlases rather than in a standard edition of the Atlas de la Navigation , which may account for this issue's scarcity. References: OCLC 796367907. Norwich, O. I., Norwich's Maps of Africa: An Illustrated and Annotated Cartobibliography, 256. (De Wit 1680).